Imagine that there is an hourglass on your desk. The present is the point at which time touches eternity. May we never let the things we cannot have, or do not have, spoil enjoying this moment in time. Women religious viewed the issue of celibacy from vastly different perspectives. Most male clerics took holy orders by choice or were resigned to their family’s decision to provide a son as a priest. A great number of women, however, were consigned to convents, and to celibacy, without consultation and against their will. Many women took the vow of celibacy seriously because the moral pressure to preserve their virginity was particularly strong, for virginity was a perennial obsession of religious thinkers and writers. Even marital pleasures of the flesh was considered impure, loathsome, and bestial, and “indecent burning of the flesh and shameless coition, that fullness of coition, that fullness of stinking ordure and uncomely deed.” It was, in fact, mere “a bed for the sick, to catch in their fall the unstrong who cannot stand in the high hill, and so near to Heaven, as the virtue of maidenhood.” The virginal was commanded: “Break not thou that seal that sealeth you together!” Marriage struck a terrifying note for many women. The rare wife or husband was worried the other would die. Most, however, hated each other, and the housewife was a miserable drudge who, when her despised mate was home, “his looking on thee makes thee aghast; hist loathsome mirth and his rude behaviour fill thee with horror.” On top of this he mocked her, beat her, and pummeled her as if she were his slave. Of course pleasures of the flesh with this beast was mandatory. The next stage of the marital purgatory was pregnancy, when the wife’s faces turns green as grass, her eyes dark-rimmed, and her head a throbbing ache. Her mouth tastes bitter and she throws up everything that enters her stomach. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23

During this period, even the daughters of wealthy families had to share the crowded women’s quarters, where they could still not escape male relatives and servants. They could never be alone, and for those who craved solitude, life was nightmarishly public. Women were barred from some rooms and often had to sit on cushions, not chairs. They owned nothing, including themselves. They could not travel alone, study, question authority. They could not teach or nurse, manage or administer. They controlled no aspect of their life, including their future. Given this reality, marriage and childbearing must have jolted many young women into serious consideration of their options, including their virginal alternative its they felt pressed to adopt. With no romantic view of marriage to seduce them, women attracted to spirituality easily slipped into thinking about, then longing for, life in a convent. Chastity was almost always an overriding attraction, because their pledge meant they renounced their sinful lust and their traditional role as a wife and mother in return for Christ’s approval and society’s administration and respect. This virginity was not merely abstention from pleasures of the flesh. It has an all embracing mystical quality as well, lyrically described by a sixteenth-century Spanish writer: “They virginity of the body is nought worth except the mind be pure withal, and if that, nothing to be more clean, nothing more pleasant to God and herself to be the follower of the most holy Mother of our Lord.” Virginity was unequivocally endorsed by the Church and guaranteed an angelic afterlife. It also eliminated the need for nasty marriage and messy childbirth and the grief of dying children. However, one could not expect to practice perpetual virginity at home, for parents would insist on marrying one off. If one was lucky, one was packed off to a convent where chastity was the cardinal virtue. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23

The convent was also a legitimate way of fleeing the complications and confusions of family life and substituting passionate, intimate relationships with other nuns. Best of all, the convent offered a nun that elusive commodity—solitude—in the form of a room or cell of her own. That cell would be tiny, but it would contain all that she needed: a desk and a chair, a crucifix, and a bed. It would be hers alone, and for hours at a time she could pray or meditate or think or read and write to her soul’s content. Food haunted many nuns and was infinitely harder to conquer than sensual appetite. All fasted, but many were immoderate and starved themselves, so that the thin, pale virgins of the Church Fathers’ fantasy were actually gaunt, yellow anorectics whose emaciated bodies did not menstruate for feel or inspire the least desire for pleasures of the flesh. Medieval convents were great established that housed—or warehoused—a significant percentage of Europe’s patrician women. In sixteenth-century Florence, for instance, half the city’s elite daughters were cloistered. In the mid-seventeenth-century Venice, 3 percent of the entire population—three thousand women—were nuns, almost all from wealthy families. Why were so many privileged women shut up inside these religious institutions? After all, affluence and status are not the usual incentives for celibacy, poverty, and obedience, the pledges at the spiritual core of every convent. Religious convictions inspired many of the nuns, but other forces drove thousands of unwilling girls and women into taking the veil. Weep, struggle, and protest though they might, relegating them to a nunnery was the era’s conventional solution to their families’ problems. A family’s fortune could be dissipated by inheritances split between too many sisters or squandered on too many dowries, but with birth control, infanticide, and adoption considered unacceptable remedies, nunneries were an excellent alternative. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23

One unwilling nun wailed in a folk song: “My mother wished me to become a nun to fatten the dowry of my sister and I to obey my Mama cut my hair and became one.” Inconvenient bastard daughters also cost money and created problems, but as nuns, they disappeared forever. When spinsters and windows likewise dug into the family purses, once again the convent was an obvious answer. The dowry required of a novice was much small than a husband would demand, and once it was paid, the inconvenient woman became a lifelong charge on her convent, not on her relatives. A father’s bad investments, addictive gambling, unwise political alliances, or personal extravagances might also drive him to rid himself of surplus female relatives by donating them, along with a small bequest, to the service of God. Girls in line for inheritances were also sometimes shunted off into cloisters because in the eyes of the law, a nun was dead, and a dead daughter could make no claims on her father’s estate. King, too, shut up rebels’ wives and daughters n convents, biblically justified punishment for their fathers’ sins. Parents also disposed of disabled, deformed, deaf, intellectually disabled girls by placing them in nunneries. Sometimes the abbesses or prioresses were loath to accept them, especially the mentally ill or insane, but financial considerations won some over, so a nun without the least comprehension of what she was pledging gave her solemn oath of chastity, poverty, and obedience. A popular poem observed sadly: “Now Earth to Earth in convent walls to Earth in churchyard sod. I was not good enough for man, and so am given to God.” Civil unrest and wars, danger and insecurity, also sent thousands of women inside the safety of convent walls. Even girls as young as five and six were cloistered, with nine being the average age in Italy. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23

A fifteenth-century Venetian law bemoaned the legion of noble girls “imprisoned in monasteries with just tears and complaints,” and the chansons de nonne, sone about reluctant nuns, was a favourite theme of medieval poetry. For these women, a parent’s peremptory “Get thee to a nunnery” condemned them to a life sentence in a wretched prison. If the Enemy continues to make war against you, this might mean that he has still not obtained what he set out to achieve, otherwise he would stop tormenting you. If you experience struggle in your flesh, it means you have not surrendered, otherwise you would immediately be at peace (I am referring, of course, to a false peace). If you have no struggle at all, rather be afraid and question yourself. Recognize that either this has happened by a free gift of God—in which case you should simply thank Him and feel unworthy of it, or else it has happened because you have become accustomed to evil and compromise—in which case it is time for you to wake up. St. Catherine of Siena once received a visit from her Heavenly Spouse at a time when she was being assailed by a tide of temptations of the flesh. “My Lord,” she called out to Him, “where were You when my heart was being tormented by so many temptations?” And the Lord replied: “I was in your heart.” And she said: “Saving always the truth of what You say, my Lord, and with all due respect for Your Majesty, how can I believe that You were living in my heart, when it was full of unclean and devilish thoughts?” And the Lord answered: “Those thoughts and temptations: did they gladden your heart, or sadden it? Did they bring you pleasure or displeasure?” And she replied: “Great pain, and great displeasure.” And the Lord answered: “Who was it Who made you feel displeasure, if not I Whom was hiding in the center of your heart?” #RandolphHarris 5 of 23

What is said about temptation also, in a different way, to the simple “call” of the other gender. If at certain times the appeal of the other gender, no-one should be surprised or over-anxious; and for men, the fascination of women, are strongly felt. This is not evil, it is simply natural. It goes back to the fact that “from the beginning, God made them male and female.” We must not hide behind the screen of “angelism,” or seek refuge in coarse language, in order to show off our freedom with the other gender, when freedom is precisely what is missing. Nor do we need to make demons of the other gender, especially of women, or scorn and insult beauty simply because it is “visible” and “transitory.” Even if it can be wrongly used, beauty, as we know, comes from God. Since in the past, in this and in every other area, things were always seen from a man’s point of view, it is not surprising that the ambiguity of gender was translated into ambiguity about women and into misogyny. Not even the Holy Bible, in so far as it reflects a particular culture, is entirely immune from it. See, for example, the Book of Sirach (25.12): “Any spite, rather than the spite of a woman! Do not be taken in by a woman’s beauty. Since began with a woman, and thanks to her we must all die.” In this way anything shady or destructive about pleasures of the flesh is identified with women. From companion and “helper” similar to man, woman then becomes his shame, an obscure threat and a trap. However, this comes from sin, not from God. Instead, what we should do is turn that “call” and fascination of the other gender into the best part of our “living sacrifice.” We should tell ourselves: “Fine, this is exactly what I have chosen to offer for the sake of the Kingdom and for the Lord!” #RandolphHarris 6 of 23

And if at certain times, especially in youth, that call is transformed into temptation, we should launch bravely into battle with the name of Jesus in our heart and on our lips, as brave soldiers sometimes go on the assault, shouting the name of their sovereign or their captain above the fray. There is also a concern with the delicate question of physical or external virginity, and about spiritual or interior virginity. The Church has always honoured virginity, even in its physical and bodily manifestation, calling it “holy virginity (sancta virginitas). Clearly, it is not virginity itself that is “holy,” since it is possible to remain virginal and intact for many reasons which has nothing to do with holiness. What enables us to speak of holiness in this case is the intention or purpose that moves a person to remain a virgin. Sometimes people may have made the mistake of overvaluing the physical aspect of wholeness, both in men and women. A certain contemporary culture has reacted by going to the opposite extreme by denying virginity any value at all, and even making it a figure of fun. Mental health researchers working in the interpersonal tradition hold various assumptions about the relationship between interpersonal communication and relationships on the one hand, and mental health problems on the other. These associations can take a variety of forms. Perhaps the most powerful of these assumptions is that interpersonal phenomena are causally involved in disrupting mental health. Although this hypothesis has not often been tested directly, it is a deeply held conviction among many theorists and researchers. In some cases of psychopathology, interpersonal issues appear to be the dominant antecedent factor. For example, when marital distress or dissolution immediately precedes an episode of major depression the development of alcohol dependence, or a somatoform disorder, the disruption of interpersonal relationships is assumed to be the primary cause of the psychological symptoms of distress. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23

Research evidence in some areas (exempli gratia, personality disorders, eating disorders, and depression) suggest that these interpersonal antecedents to mental health problems need not always be proximal to the onset of the disorder. An intriguing possibility is that certain interpersonal events create dispositions that lie dormant until later adulthood, or that the effects of character styles of communication and relating to other people accumulate over time, until they pass some threshold that then initiates an episode of mental illness. For example, some of the most profound effects of childhood abuse and neglect may not be evident until a child reaches adulthood and attempts to initiate intimate relationships with other adults and/or to raise children of one’s own. Similarly, a child with poor social skills may not experience the full implications of this problem with interpersonal communication until, as an adult, one leaves the supportive family context and moves out into the World to establish close relationships with other people. In addition to being a proximal cause and a distal cause of psychological problems, interpersonal phenomena may also function as a vulnerability factor in the disruption of mental health. At least some interpersonal process, such as parental neglect and overinvolvement, poor social skills, and unavailable personal relationships, may create a vulnerability to the development of psychosocial problems. This conceptualization of the interpersonal origins of mental health problems fits well with diathesis-stress models. In diathesis—stress models of illness, a predisposition or preexisting factor (the diathesis) lies somewhat idle until the person experiences stress, at which time full-blown distress and illness results. For many if not most people, interpersonal issues such as relational distress, maltreatment by parents, and conflict can act as stressors that interact with preexisting temperamental, cognitive, psychological or biological predispositions to produce episodes of mental illness. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23

What remain rather mysterious are how and why various interpersonal phenomena lead to vastly differing mental health outcomes in different people. The reasons why the same vulnerability factor, such as parental neglect, may lead to one type of psychopathology in one individual but a different problem in another are not yet well understood. Some people who are abuse as children develop major depression later in life. Other develop eating disorders, still others personality disorders, and yet others substance abuse or dependence. And then there are the myriad of people who have experienced vulnerability factors (abuse, parental alcoholism, family conflict, et cetera), but who have no symptoms of psychopathology at all. Such people are characterized as “resilient,” and present anomalies in need of explanation. These resilient cases are reminders that the relationship between interpersonal distress and psychological distress is probabilistic, not deterministic. The current search for moderating and mediating variables in this context holds great promise for answer to such questions, and is an imperative for future research in the interpersonal paradigm. Another primary assumption in the interpersonal paradigm is that interpersonal dysfunction is a consequence of mental health problems. This assumption has been scientifically proven beyond any reasonable doubt. When people experience episodes of psychopathology—be it depression, schizophrenia, social anxiety, substance abuse or dependence, eating disorders, personality disorders, somatoform disorders, or psychogenic sexual dysfunction—the quality of their interpersonal relationships and communication is bound to change. Usually this change is for the worse. Part of the reason for this deterioration in interpersonal relations, secondary to poor mental health, is the social behaviour of the individual. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23

Psychological problems can alter the most basic components of verbal and nonverbal communication. People with such problems may not be able or willing to express themselves clearly and openly to other people. Their discourse may be dominated by particular themes and concerns, or may show no coherence or pattern at all in the cause of more profound illnesses. Furthermore, psychopathology can alter the way afflicted individuals view and experience relationships with other people. Social relationships that were once experienced as rewarding can become frightening, distressing, and confusing for psychiatric patients. “The LORD will continually guide you, and satisfy your desire in scorched places, and give strength to your bones; and you will be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water whose waters do not fail,” reports Isaiah 58.11. Is it not interesting that we believe God is guiding us along as we are getting what we want and we are living on cloud nine, relatively unscathed by the warp and woof of life in the valley below. However, we need to understand that the Lord is directing our steps even when it seems things are not going our way. You may be in a stressful situation today. You may be living with a spouse or a child who is difficult to get along with. Or perhaps because of favouritism or politics at the office, you are not being treated fairly, or possibly you are having to work two jobs in order to make ends meet. You may be thinking, “This does not seem right. God, I do not understand it.” The Scripture says, “Since the Lord is directing our steps, why try to figure out everything that happens along the way?” reports Proverbs 20.24 Friend, you are never going to understand everything you go though in life or why certain things come against you. You simply must learn to trust God anyway. You must learn to keep a good attitude in the midst of the chaos and confusion, knowing that God is still in control. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23

Sometimes God will put you in an uncomfortable situation so you can help someone else. God knows what He is going. He can see the comprehensive vision; God can see the future. And He has you exactly where He wants you today. Stop questioning Him and start trusting Him. Just know that God is in control. He has your best interest at heart. Trust Him today to direct your steps, and to cause you to be right where you need to be at just the right times. “Somewhere there’s speaking. It’s already coming it. Oh, and it’s rising at the back of your mind. You could never get it, unless you were fed it. Now you’re here and you don’t know why. But under skinned knees and the skid marks, past the places where to used to learn, you howl and listen. Listen and wait for the echoes of angels who won’t return. He’s everything you want, he’s everything you need, he’s everything inside of you that you wish you could be. He says all the right things at exactly the right time, but he means nothing and you don’t know why.” (Want by Vertical Horizon.) Dear Lord in Heaven, thank you that even in the uncomfortable spots in life, I can have confidence that You are aware of me, that You care about what is happening to me, and that You have a plane to bring good into my life and through my life as a result. We believe that the Holy Spirit expressed the presence of God within the human personality. God’s loving will becomes incarnate in the human situation when His love flows freely through a person into others and back to God through feelings of gratitude and praise. Thus the cycle is competed and God is able to permeate, transform, and elevate each life that is open to Him. Prayerful surrender to God from the core of one’s being brings about a fundamental change in the quality of a person’s life, so that life comes to be lived on an entirely different level of existence. Mysterious as this may sound, it actually has to do with changes in very ordinary aspects of living, such as increases awareness of what we see and hear, a heightened degree of receptivity, a growing capacity to respond—to be engaged in the moment as one who is fully present. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23

Coming home to one’s core involves surrendering to the quiet inner wisdom of the mysterious, bedrock presence of the Holy Spirit within one’s life and personality. King Solomon was aware of this when he wrote: “For wisdom will enter the very center of your being, filling your life with joy,” reports Proverbs 2.10. To glimpse the land beyond is not to reach the goal itself. If one were able to experience it constantly, one who experiences it only intermittently may guess from this how wonderful one’s existence would be. Seeing a human or an object is one thing, recognizing one or it is another. The glimpse is the beginning; recognizing it for what it is, is a further and extended operation. These glimpses come quite fitfully. Rare is the person to whom the Light comes and stays, day after day, year after year. Most have to work on, with, and by themselves to convert this momentary experience into the ever-present feeling of living in the Overself. It is a human’s highest happiness to stay in this Heaven of Consciousness all the time, not merely catch a glimpse of it, wonderful though that be. If its promptings are faithfully followed, enlightenment ripens into Exhilaration. The joyous awareness evoked for a short period is a foretaste of what will one day be manifested continuously. One can then say truthfully, knowing whereof speaks: A divine element lives in me!” Far through this has taken one from the ordinary good human or ordinary pious human, it is not enough. One needs to go further so that one can attain the place where, obedient, purified, conscious of the World-Idea, one can add: “This element now works in me.” With that the ego’s tyranny falls away. One’s impulses, intuitions, and emotional reactions alike will harmonize in time with the true. Flashes of Cosmic Consciousness or glimpses of the higher self could be one aspect of it only, such as its beauty or its wisdom. You will have to broaden out later. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23

“For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea, and shall not doubt in one’s heart, but shall believe that those things which one saith shall come to pass; one shall have whatsoever one saith,” reports Mark 11.23. Noticed He said, “Those things which one saith.” He did not say one would have what one hoped for or what one prayed. He said, “One will have what one says.” Evidently, your saying can nullify you praying. If you pray one thing and say another, you are going to have what you say, not what you pray. However, when you get your saying and your praying together, you have just the spiritual forces working for you. Jesus said, “Therefore it will work in prayer.” This faith principle, a principle of spiritual law, works in prayer; but we have used it in reserves. We have prayed, “Lord, the mountain is getting bigger. I cannot overcome it. Move the mountain, Lord it is getting bigger!” God says, “But child, I said you can have what you say.” “Yes, but Lord, I have this problem.” “But child you can have what you say, even in prayer.” “Yes, Lord but You do not understand. It is getting worse.” We have been operating it in reverse and it has caused the mountain to grow. Jesus said you are to speak to the mountain, not pray to God about the mountain. He said, “Whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea and shall not doubt in one’s heart, but shall believe those things which one saith shall come to pass; one shall have whatsoever one prayeth?” No, one will have whatsoever one saith. If one does not get one’s saying in line with one’s praying, one will be wasting one’s time. God is not in the business of doing many of the things we pray for Him to do. We try to do what God is supposed to do and ask Him to do what we are supposed to do. We say, “Lord, take all my cares.” However, He is not going to do that. He said we are to cast all of our cares on Him because He cares for us. (1 Peter 5.7.) We have been doing all the caring and worrying. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23

We pray for God to take our caring and worrying from us, but He cannot do that. If you cast them upon Him, he will do the caring. “Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there by any praise, think on these things,” reports Philippians 4.6-8. We have been wanting God to give us peace while we think on all the bad things. He cannot do that. It is against His Word. Just as a jeweler cannot fix your watch until he or she has it in one’s possession, neither can God work out your problem until you give it to Him or cast it over unto Him, and leave it there. Once you have prayed, do not take it up again. Just thank Him for the answer. I remember as I was complaining about a problem, I realized so many people keep trying to work out their problems by their own rules. “They have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge,” reports Romans 10.2. In some developing countries, the less affluent spends about six hours a day merely finding firewood one needs for cooking and heating. Another four to six hours are spent bringing water from a well, and a similar amount to graze cattle, goats, or sheep. Since such a family cannot afford to hire labour and cannot buy labour-saving gadgets, its only rational response is to have at least three children to satisfy its energy needs. Rural energy may prove an excellent contraceptive. The requirement of villages in developing nations can easily be met by a tiny, inexpensive bio-gas plant that uses human and animal waste from the village itself. Many thousands of such units are far more useful, ecologically sound, and economical than a few giants, centralized plants. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23

We have to be able to understand people and their lifestyles to be able to help them. We also need to understand why they do the things they do. Arid, miserably unproductive acres of land can be turned into World-renowned models of solar farms with bio-gas plants. These farms will produce enough grains, fruits, and vegetables to feed a family and employees as well as tons of food to sell at a profit to the marketplace. Many people complain about overfishing. However, at the Environmental Research Lab in Tucson, Arizona, shrimp are being grown in long troughs in greenhouses, right alongside cucumbers and lettuce—with the shrimp waste recycled to fertilize the vegetables. In Vermont experimenters are raising catfish, trout, and vegetables in a similar manner. The water in the fish take collects solar heart and releases it at night to keep temperatures up. Again, the fish waste is used to fertilize the vegetables. IN Massachusetts, at the New Alchemy Institute, chickens are being raised atop the fish tank. Their droppings fertilize algae, which the fish then eat. These are only three countless examples of innovation in food production and food processing—many of which have special, exciting relevance for many developing nations. Advances in other fields cast doubt on traditional development thinking. In many developing nations, they are facing an explosive unemployment and underemployment crisis. It is massive. Over emphasis on labour-intensive technology with low productive could trap poorer countries. They should focus on microelectronics. Productivity is rising spectacularly in the computer chip industry, it is certainly an advantage to capital-poor developing countries to get greater output per unit of capital invested. Developing countries can take basic technology and adapt it more easily to suit their own social requirements or raw materials. Microelectronic technology lends itself to decentralization of production. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23

This also means reduced population pressures on the bid cities, and the rapid miniaturization in this field cuts transportation costs as well. Best of all, this form of production has low energy requirements, and the growth of the market so rapid—and the competition so keen—that even rich nations attempt to monopolize these industries they are unlikely to succeed. At the time of the industrial revolution, roads were a prerequisite for social, political, and economic development. Today an electronic communications system is necessary. It was once thought that communications were the outgrowth of economic development. Now, this is an outmoded thesis. Telecommunications were more of a precondition than a consequence, and helped to develop the Internet, which has revolutionized business. Today’s plummeting cost of communications suggest the situation of communications for many transport functions. In may be far less expensive, more energy-conserving, and more appropriate in the long run to lay in an advanced communications network than a ramified structure of costly roads and streets. Clearly, road transport is needed. However, to the degree that production is decentralized, rather than centralized, transport costs can be minimized without isolating villages from one another, from the urban areas, or from the World at large. Many countries are aware of the importance of communications and it is clear from the way they are waging for a redistribution of the World’s electronic spectrum. In 2018, the Marea cable began operating between Bilbao, Spain, and the United States state of Virginia, with transmission speeds of up to 160 terabits per second—16 million times faster than the average home internet connection. Today, there are around 380 underwater cables in operation around the World, spanning a length of over 1.2 million kilometers (745,645 miles), and they carry about 95 percent of intercontinental voice and data traffic, making them critical for the economics and national security of most countries. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23

Underwater cables are the invisible force driving the modern internet, with many in recent years being funded by internet giants such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. They carry almost all our communications and yet—in a World of wireless networking and smartphones—we are barely aware that they exist. Most people are absolutely amazed by the degree to which the internet is still cable-based. People are so mobile and always looking for Wi-Fi. They do not think about it, the do not understand the workings of this massive mesh of cables. They only notice when it is cut. This is creating a call for a New World Information Order. Chinese company Huawei is embedding itself into cable systems that ferry nearly all the World’s internet data. This has created a battle between America and China over control of global networks that deliver the internet. Current and former security officials in the United States of America and allied governments now worry that these cables are increasingly vulnerable to espionage or attack and say the involvement of Huawei potentially enhances China’s capabilities. The Chinese company, majority owned by Huawei Technologies, had worked on some 90 projects to build or upgrade submarine cables around the World. However, Huawei dines any threat. Yet, officials report that the company’s knowledge of and access to undersea cables could allow China to attach devices that divert or monitor data traffic—or, in a conflict, to sever links to entire nations. Such interference could be done remotely via Huawei network management software and other equipment at coastal landing stations, where submarine cables join land-based network. Given that undersea cables carry the bulk of the World’s telecommunications data, safeguarding these cables remains a key priority for the United State of America’s government and its allies. Many people still believe the future is with satellite communications systems. Developments like these in energy, agriculture, technology, and communication suggest something even deeper—whole new societies based on the fusion of past and future. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23

A new balance has now to be struck between the most advanced science and technology available to the human race and the idyllic green pastures, the village republics. Such a practical combination requires a total transformation of the society, its symbols and values, its system of education, its incentives, the flow of its energy resources, its scientific and industrial research and a whole lot of other institutions. Implied in this approach is another synthesis at an even deeper level. This involves the entire economic relationship of people to the market—irrespective of whether that market is capitalist or socialist in form. It forces us to question how much of any individual’s total time and labour should be devoted to production and how much to presumption—ie est, how much to working for pay in the marketplace as against working for itself. Most develop nations, First Wave populations, have already been drawn into the money system. They have been “maketized.” However, while the wretched money income earned by the World’s poorest people may be vital to their survival, production for exchange provides only part of their income; presumption provides the rest. We have to look at this situation, too, in a fresh way. In country after country millions are jobless. However, if fully employment in these societies a realistic goal? What combination of policies can possibly, withing our lifetime, provide full-time jobs for all these surging millions? Is the very notion of “unemployment” itself a Second Wave concept? The problem is not unemployment, which is a Western concept that presupposes modern sector wage employment, labour markets, labour exchanges and social security payments. The problems is rather, unremunerative, unproductive work of the poor, particularly of the rural poor. The remarkable rise of the prosumer in the affluent nations today, is a striking phenomenon of the Third Waves, leads us to question the deepest assumptions and goals of most Second Wave economist. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23

Perhaps it is a mistake to emulate the industrial revolution in the West, which saw the transfer of most economic activity out of Sector A (the prosumer sector) and into Sector B (the market Sector). Perhaps what is needed for most people is part-time employment for wages (possibly with some transfer payments) plus imaginative new policies aimed at making their presumption more “productive.” Indeed, linking these two economic activities more intelligently to one another may be the missing key to survival for millions. Misery in the poor countries (and even in America) is often so extreme that washing machines, battery testers, or power tools seem, at first glance, wildly out of place. The World’s poor do not necessarily want jobs—they want food and a home. The job is only a means to this end. However, one can often grow one’s own food and build one’s own home, or at least contribute to the process. By sending food to less affluent countries, sure we have helped the starving, but is has also led to the rapid growth of the World’s population and creating more starving human beings. Relaxing certain land laws and building codes will make it easier for people to build and improve their own housing. Government need to remove these obstacles and help people supply their own housing, offering them assistance in organization, the provision of some materials otherwise difficult to obtain, and if possible, site development—id est, water or electricity. Anything that helps the individual prosume more effectively may be just as important as production measured in conventional GNP (Gross National Product) terms. This would keep people out of institutional house,” keep them off the streets and allow them to have their privacy and freedom.  To increase the productivity of the productivity of the prosumer, governments need to focus scientific and technological research on presumption. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23

 However, even now the government could, at a remarkably low cost, provide simple hand tools, community workshops, trained craftsmen or teachers, limited communications facilities and, where possible, power generation equipment—plus favourable propaganda or moral support for those who invest “sweat equity” in building their own homes or improving their bits of land. Second Wave propaganda today unfortunately coveys to even the World’s most remote and poorest people the idea that the things they make themselves are inherently inferior to the worst mass-produced junk. Rather than teaching people to despise their own efforts, to value Second Wave products and downgrade what they themselves create, governments should be offering prices for the best or most imaginative self-built homes and goods, the most “productive” presumption. The knowledge that even the World’s richest people are increasingly prosuming may help change attitudes among the very poorest. For the Third Wave casts into a dramatic new light the entire relationship of market to nonmarket activities in all societies of the future. Even with all these computers and technology that tells one what is wrong with a car, people are still taking advantage of consumers and making them spend thousands of dollars to figure out what is going on, instead of flat out telling them. The Third Wave also raises non-economic and non-technological concerns to primary importance. It makes us look at education, for example, with fresh eyes. Education, everyone agrees, is central to development. However, what kind of education? When the colonial powers introduced formal education into it made sense because people also had skills. Today we need to combine learning with work, political struggles, community service, and even play. All conventional assumptions about education need to be re-examined both in the rich countries and in the poor. Third Wave encourages of to look being conventional Second Wave assumptions with respect to motivation as well. Better nutrition is likely to raise the entire level of intelligence and functional competence among millions of children—at the same time that it increases drive and motivation. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23

Second Wave people often speak of the passivity and lack of motivation of the less affluent. Leaving aside the demotivating effects of malnutrition, intestinal parasites, unclean living environments that make one sick, climate, and oppressive political control, might not a part of what seems like lack of motivation be an unwillingness to tear up one’s home, family, and life in the present in return for the dubious hope of a better life many years down the road? So long as “development” means the superimposition of a totally alien culture on an existing one, and so long as actual improvements seems impossibly beyond reach, there is every reason to hang on to the little one has. We are not at a point where there is a ready-made model for emulation anymore. America is still developing. However, for the poor as well as the rich it opens novel, perhaps liberating, possibilities. For it calls attention not to the weakness, poverty, and misery of the First Wave World, but to some of its inherent strengths. The very features of this ancient civilization that seem so backward from the standpoint of the Second Wave appear as potentially advantageous when measure against the template of the advancing Third Wave. The congruity of these two civilizations must, in the years ahead, transform the way we think about relations between the poor and the rich on the planet. The poor as well as the rich are crouched at the starting line of a new and startlingly different race into the future. So long as several humans together consider themselves to be a single body, they have but a single will, which is concerned with their common preservation and the general well-being. The more harmony reigns in the assemblies, that is to say, the closer opinions come to unanimity, the more dominant too is the general will. However, long debates, dissensions, and tumult betoken the ascendance of private interest and the decline of the state. The vice inherent in the body politic, there are, as it were, two states in one. What is not true of the two together is true of each of them separately. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23

And indeed even in the most tumultuous times, the plebiscites of the people, when the senate did not interfere with them, always passed quietly and by a large majority of votes. Since the citizens have but one interest, the people had but one will. At the other extreme of the circle, unanimity returns. It is when the citizens, having fallen into servitude, no longer have either liberty or will. Then fear and flattery turn voting to acclamations. People no longer deliberate; either they adore or they curse. Such was the vile manner in which the senate expressed its opinions under the emperors; sometimes it did so with ridiculous precautions. There is but one law that by its nature requires unanimous consent. This is the social compact. For civil association is the most voluntary act in the World. Since every human is born free and master of oneself, no one can, under any pretext whatever, place another under subjection without one’s consent. To decide that the son of a slave is born a slave is to decide that one is not a human. If, therefore, at the time of the social compact, there are opponents to it, their opposition does not invalidate the contract; it merely prevents them from being included in it. They are foreigners among citizens. Once the state is instituted, residency implies consent. To inhabit the territory is to submit to sovereignty. The citizen consents to all the laws, even to those that pass in spite of one’s opposition, and even to those that punish one when one dares to violate any of them. The constant will of all the members of the state is the general will; through it they are citizens and free. To gain power is to gain respect; it is also—equally, inevitably—to be hated. One who is afraid to e hated is disabled in one’s pursuit of power, for with each gain in power will come an increase in hatred. The greater the fear of this hatred, the greater the obstacle to the pursuit of power. One continues on a course of increasing power until fear calls a halt. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23

If Atlantis went to its grave under the impulse of violent eruptions that rocked the World, the Atlantean use of atomic power for warlike purposes lay behind the eruptions themselves. If humans had better character and more intuition they would not and could not accept such horrors, even in the name of self-defense. War disrupts customs, dissolves mortality, and destroys art. It alters fate and reveals the good and the bad in human character. It is the severest test both of a human and a nation. It shocks religion, blacks out mysticism, but confirms philosophy. When the usefulness of a tradition is at an end both humans and events attack and disintegrate it. The longer the war went on, the less did it become probable that the older order of thought could be restored after it. Behold! Our mother Earth is lying here. Behold! She gives of her fruitfulness. Truly, her power she gives us. Give thanks to Mother Earth who lies here. Behold! On Mother Earth the growing fields! Behold the promise of her fruitfulness! Truly, her power she gives us. Give thanks to Mother Earth who lies here. Behold on Mother Earth the spreading of beautiful trees! Behold the promise of her fruitfulness! Truly, her power she gives us. Give thanks to Mother Earth who lies here. Behold on Mother Earth the running streams; we see the promise of her fruitfulness. Truly, her power she gives us. Our thanks to Mother Earth who lies here. God did thus make thus His greatness and holiness know in Thy World, and didst bring great deliverance to America. Then Thy children came into Thy dwelling place, cleansed the Temple, purified the Sanctuary, kindled lights in Thy sacred courts, and they designated these days for giving thanks and praise unto Thy great name. For all this, Thy name, O our King, shall be blessed and exalted for ever and ever. O inscribe all the children of Thy covenant for a happy life. May all the living do homage unto Thee forever and praise Thy name in truth, O God, who are our salvation and our help. Blessed be Thou, O Lord, Beneficent One, unto whom our thanks are due. Grant lasting peace unto America Thy people, for Thou art the Sovereign Lord of peace; and may it be good in Thy sight to bless Thy people America at all times with Thy peace. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who blessest Thy people America. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23

Cresleigh Homes

Welcoming the last week of 2021 with optimism and joy. There’s nothing like waking up to all the natural light pouring in…we love our floorplan from Brighton Station Residence 2!

Take a virtual tour on our website; there’s so much to see! https://cresleigh.com/brighton-station/residence-2/

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